Technology evolves for everyone, also for children. One of the classic icons in the world of toys, the Mattel Barbie doll , also joins the bandwagon of innovation. The famous Barbie house, the “Barbie DreamHouse” , already had devices such as laptops , television screens or tablets in its previous edition . But this new version of 2016 goes further, and now it has become a home automation called "Barbie Hello DreamHouse . "
The smart chalet of the famous doll was presented last February at the International Toy Fair in New York. At the moment it is only available in pre-purchase for a price that is quite realistic proportionally speaking, 300 euros nothing more and nothing less. But of course, this house is not just any house, it is as if we compare a normal chalet with a super domotized chalet that prepares you breakfast with just an order to Siri. Let's see what I mean.
Children can speak directly to the house as it is able to recognize up to 100 different voice commands. It's kind of like the way Siri works with the new iOS 1st app, “Home”.
You can ask the house to lower the elevator for Barbie, turn on the oven or change the tone of the lights depending on whether we are relaxing or having a party. It is a very similar technology to what we find in Philips Hue smart lights , we can also customize the tones and colors.
The house also includes different predefined game modes (party, relax, work), each of which includes different lighting and music, as well as different records of interaction with the children through voice.
But it doesn't just work by voice control. We will also have different buttons located in each of the rooms that start them up. For example, the button in the living room turns on the lights in the living room, the fireplace and the television, and the button in the kitchen turns on the lights and the oven.
The house works through electrical power so we will have to locate it in a place close to a socket and it is necessary to have a Wi-Fi router, because it does not have an Ethernet connection.
Barbie's new smart home appears just a year after Mattel launched Hello Barbie , a doll equipped with artificial intelligence in the purest Siri style, which allows children to have real conversations with her. As in all the advances , Hello Barbie had a great reception technologically speaking, but the authorities came to warn that the toy could be used as a surveillance device by hackers in order to spy on and harass children . Whether this is the case or not, we cannot stop celebrating that technological advances are also being put at the service of the little ones.